I can’t quite feel anything for Iggle Piggle, much. I don’t dislike him, but I don’t like him either. He’s a bit of a blank, isn’t he? Oh, sure, he likes bridges and dislikes mucky patches, but don’t we all? He likes Upsy-Daisy, but we never get a sense of how that relationship evolved. Iggle Piggle lacks depth. He carries that blanket around as a substitute for a personality, but I’m not fooled. Also his song is a bit of a half-arsed riff on the theme tune. C

Upsy-Daisy

I confess, I wasn’t much of a fan of Upsy-Daisy to begin with. Too much singing and skirt-inflation, not enough… well, anything else. But a few episodes recently have changed my mind. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to sing or play with the ball, to ride the Pinky-Ponk or the Ninky-Nonk! It was a masterful performance, and totally switched me round. Her song is a pretty solid composition, too, and I frequently find myself singing it to my daughter. B

The Pontipines/Wottingers

Oh, I really don’t get on with the Pontipines. They’re kind of difficult. Wooden, for a start, and so simply animated that it is hard to get any personality from them. What do we have to go on? They’re terrible parents and make odd millinery choices. Mr Pontipine has a large moustache, like a retired colonel, and one can’t help but think the Pontipine children keep running away because he is a terrible authoritarian. You don’t get that feeling from the Wottingers, who are definitely the happier family. No moustache clinches it, also Mr Wottinger doesn’t have a hat which looks like a clothes peg. But you see them about once every fifteen episodes, and those bloody Pontipines turn up all the time C-

The Tombliboos

Now you’re talking. The Tombliboos live in a hedge, but not in a tramp way. Their platform-filled, black-as-night house will no doubt be the setting for many a childhood dream, leading some people to wonder if they only dreamed it, did it ever exist? But, you know, also they lose their trousers. A lot. The episode where they kept putting on each other’s trousers, then losing them on the Ninky-Nonk, then having to change behind a rock… I was in tears of laughter. Genuine comic genius. Trousers. And Derek Jacobi’s delivery is perfect – “Tombliboos, are you wearing the right trousers?” They are also excellent toothbrush advocates/propogandists, with some cracking rhymes (Tombliboos, form a line/Brush your teeth and make them shine) Okay, not quite a full A because their Pinky-Ponk Juice antics are a bit dull. A-

Makka Pakka

Makka Pakka,
Akka Wakka,
Mikka Makka moo!

Makka Pakka,
Appa yakka,
Ikka akka, ooo

Hum dum,
Agga pang,
Ing, ang, ooo

Makka Pakka,
Akka wakka,
Mikka Makka mooA+

The Ninky-Nonk/Pinky-Ponk

Clearly, the Ninky-Nonk rules. The Pinky Ponk is just so slow and ponderous, it takes forever for anything to happen and if the Tombliboos get on they’re just going to arse about with Pinky-Ponk Juice. I do like the Ponk Alarm, though. Good to have a safety device that goes parp. The Ninky-Nonk is anarchic, has a lot of attitude for what is basically a bus shaped like a TARDIS being towed by a banana, and can climb trees. What’s not to love? Especially the trippy scale-factors. Is it knee-high? Is it truck-sized? Is it small enough to go along a little branch? It’s all of this! Okay, Derek is a bit wary of it (“Oh no! It’s the Ninky-Nonk!”), but he’s an old man, he’s probably worried about whether it’ll accept his Freedom Pass Oyster. Ninky-Nonk B+/Pinky-Ponk C+

It had been a good Hallowe’en, and a long one. I had carved a pumpkin– classical style, a grinning mouth and a triangular nose – and set it out on thefront step to indicate to the neighbourhood kids that, yes, trick or treating was welcome here. And had they ever taken up that invitation! I had bought a half-dozen bags of assorted sweets and still I was looking in danger of running out before the end of the rush. In theory I could raid the fruit bowl, but who wants to be the one handing out apples? Not I. No, it’s tooth-rotting crap or nothing, I am a man of principle.

I was just pondering a run to the corner shop for a bag of whatever they had in– ooh, barley sugars– whenthe torrent just stopped. A lone boy in his early teens wearing a Scream mask and a blue tracksuit was to be my final visitor. He was unmoved by my offering of a couple of Black Jacks, a mini Mars bar and a lolly, taking thechocolate without comment and disappearing into the night before I could wish him a happy Hallowe’en.

“That’s it,” I thought as he left.“No more. Late now. Kids all in bed. Time to relax.” Iblew out the candle in my pumpkin,dimmed the lights of my living room and switched on the TV, hoping for something relatively spooky to keep the mood of Hallowe’en going.Stalwart copyright-free zombie flick Night of the Living Dead wastempting meon one of the cheaper satellite channels, but I instead ended up watching a biography of Aleister Crowley.

Exhausted, I dozed sporadically before succumbing to sleepbefore the programme had finished. In this state, I had an extraordinarily vivid dream.

I was walking along a country lane at night, the trees forming a canopy above my head allowing brief glimpses of the moon. It was a thin, sharp crescent but its light was strong, cold and silver on the road ahead of me. Glancing up to see if there were any stars visible, I was surprised to hear footstepson the road ahead of me. There had been no-one there a moment before. There was a hollowness to the footsteps and a clicking which put me in mind of horses. I peered down the tunnel of trees and saw a figure walking toward me. It was tall, and moved with an easy grace.

I could not see the figure’s face, even though the moonlight shone directly on it. Despite it being, at first glance, some distance away, the figure loomed overme. I swayed backwards,alarmed, as it reached out a pale handand went to takemy shoulder. I still could not make out a face. I pulled away from it, and it reached out again. The hand looked waxen, unmoving, and I did not want it to touch me. It was as if it was a false hand, thrust from the folds of the figure’s voluminous sleeve in an attempt to appear more human.

I took several paces back, keeping my gaze fixed on the figure in front of me, not wanting to give it an opportunity to gain even more ground on me.It remained motionless asI backed away. When I felt sufficiently distant,I glanced to my side to see if there was any way out of the tunnel of trees I had walked down. Without any sense of surprise, I noticed aroad at right angles to the one I was on. It had not been there moments before, but in a dream nothing follows neatly and logically so it seemed quite natural that there was a new road there. What did strike me as odd was the face at the bottom of the nearest tree. A crooked smile, illuminated from within. It was the pumpkin I had carved and set out by my lawn.

I heard the hollow clatter of the creature’s footsteps, andlooked back tosee it almost upon me again. This time its hand was stretched out palm up, as if begging. I felt thatit wanted me to give itsomething, anything,andmaybe that would makeit leave me alone. Its arm stretched towards me,the waxen hand glistening in the moonlight. Again I felt the shiver of revulsion at the pallid mockery of alimb closing in on me. I took another step back, butfoundI had been pushed against the trunk of one of the trees at the crossroad. The pumpkinleered up at me from the opposite corner, its cartoon of a face clearer and more lifelike thanthat of the figure now taking the step which would bring it into contact with me.

I awoke with a start, back on my sofa with the TV on. Aloudknock at the door had brought me back from my dream. I looked at my watch– 11:50pm. Still Hallowe’en, but far too late for trick or treat. The knock came again. I made up my mind not to answer. I was nearly out of treats, and still a little shaken from the dream. I’d blown out the candle in the pumpkin, what clearer signal could I give? Was I going to have to hide behind my sofa until the trick or treaters went away?

The knock came again, more powerfully, hammering the knocker against the door and rattling the letterbox. I leapt to my feet and stood, rigid, staring through my living room doorway atfront door. Through the two panes of rippled glass set either side of the central strut, I could see a tall, white figure. A costume, I didn’t doubt, but the memory of my dreamchilled meat the sight of it. It raised its hand to knock again, but instead of the thunderous knockingwhich had brought me to my feet, this time it merely tapped the glass, gently, with its hand. There was a softness to the tap whichmade me shudder involuntarily.

The person at the door leaned sideways, to look into the house through the warped glass. Seeing this, I dived back down onto the sofa, hiding myself behind the cushions. I tried to convince myself that this was simply because Idid not want to have to answer the door to this absurdly late trick or treater, but I knew that I was simply terrified that the faceless creature from my dream was now standing at my threshold.

To my horror, I then heard the sound of the letterbox being slowly lifted. No doubt the thing at the door was now peering directly into my house. I have never felt so vulnerable as that moment, flat on my sofa, listening to the creaking of asmall panel of metal shifting on its hinges. So vulnerable, and so absurd. It was just a teenager, I knew that, a teenager in a sheet looking for chocolate. But I dared not move, I didn’t even want to breathe. It seemed that I was sitting there forhours. It could only have been a minute or so, though, and at the end of it the letterbox closed with a snap. Something in the atmosphere changed, and I felt somehow less afraid tostand and look at my door.

There was no-one there. I swallowed, and walked out from behind the sofa. Not feeling quite up to opening the door, I decided to check on the status of my front lawn from upstairs. I looked down from my bedroom window and was relieved to see that there wasno-one at the door, no-one even in the vicinity. I checked down the road. Might there have been a dull shine of white at the very edge of the streetlight’s illumination?A second look dispelled the illusion. The street was empty.

At thispoint, I noticed something unusual. There was a light on my front lawn. A cheery orange flicker, spilling weakly from the space near my front door. The pumpkin was lit again. Why that should be I couldn’t quite think, I had definitely blown out the candle. Regardless,I was not about to go out there to extinguish it again and for some reason I felt happier that the pumpkin was lit. It was like I had a guardian. With this thought in mind,I closed the curtains and went to bed.

The next morning, I woke from a dreamless sleep– was it dreamless? I had a faint memory of a manclothed in a white robestanding in my front lawn, hand outstretched to the window– and went downstairs to clear the house up as I had lefteverything as it was in my haste to get upstairs and look out of the window.

Things seemed perfectly normal. I went to the front door to examine for.. what, exactly? A scrape of wax on theletterbox? Fingerprints on the glass? There was nothing to be seen. I opened the door and checked the pumpkin. Its little nightlight had burned out long since, the inside of its cut-off cap scorchedwith the heat. I picked it up and was taking it over to the compost recycling bin when I noticed my lawn.

It was criss-crossed with thefootprintsof dozens of children and their parents from the night before, but what caught my attention was the final set of tracks, the deepest set,the ones which were pressed over all the others. They were small, sharp hoof-prints, and theyonly went towards my door. There was no set of these prints leading away.